In the 21st century, borders have expanded beyond defined international borderlines, and they have penetrated into cities –big and small–, into suburbs, into towns, and into rural areas all over the world.

While unrestrained globalization continues to homogenize some places, enclose and expropriate others, and produce new tensions and cleavages; people and communities are resisting. They are resisting and scaling walls, opposing displacement and segregation, diversifying landscapes, breaking the ceilings that prevent their mobility and their effective participation, establishing collaboratives, and reclaiming their health, histories, and voices.

Planning in today’s globalized spaces implies dealing with multiple borders, physical and otherwise, and acting in multiple arenas. In order to broaden the range of the discussion about planning at/over/through the borders, the 2014 Annual Planning Network Conference calls for addressing the border in both material and conceptual terms. It also calls for advancing and sharing innovative and progressive responses to confront the exclusionary challenges that borders pose to communities all over the world. Such challenges range from the physical and disciplinary to formal or informal mechanisms of control, and can encompass an array of themes, including economic, social, environmental, institutional, cultural, linguistic, and gender issues, among others.

For the first time in its history, the Planners Network conference will take place in Mexico, in the border city of Ciudad Juárez, in the State of Chihuahua, from June 5th to June 7th, 2014 at the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez (UACJ). Ciudad Juárez is an international crossroad of free trade, and social change in the Americas. It is also part of the Borderplex, a transbordermetropolitan area consisting of three cities (Ciudad Juárez, El Paso, and Las Cruces),located in three different states (Chihuahua, Texas, and Nuevo Mexico), and in two different countries (México and the United States).

The challenge of planning at the borders is here in Ciudad Juárezand we invite you to cross over and join us at the border.